Savvy Savile Row: From NHS free specs to rolled gold

As you walk through the streets surrounding Algha Works in the Fish Island area of the east end of London, there’s a stark contrast between the bleak industrial lanscape and the modern architecture of the Olympic stadium and the ArcelorMittal Orbit.

By rights, this part of east London shouldn’t exist – an archaic backwater of bygone industry overlooked by state of the art offices and gentrified canal-side apartments. Savile Row eyewear and its frames manufacturing facility, Algha Works, are almost the same. The building itself and the machinery inside it are relics, throwbacks to a time when Made in England was a sign of upmarket gravitas, not mark up in prices.